Mankind sucks like “vampires”, exhausts them “drop by drop”. water resources planets, warns today UNas the international conference begins to meet the needs of the billions of people who are at risk from the “immediate” threat of a water crisis.

“Vampire overconsumption and overdevelopment, unsustainable exploitation of water resources, pollution and uncontrolled global warming are depleting, drop by drop, this source of life for humanity,” stresses UN Secretary-General António Guterres in the preface to the report. which was released hours before the UN water conference.

“Humanity has embarked on a dangerous path”

“Humanity has blindly embarked on a dangerous path,” and “we will all bear the consequences,” he adds.

Water shortages have begun in some areas, floods are multiplying in others, water is polluted in others: as these dramatic situations are recorded in different parts of the world, the report of the UN Water Agency and UNESCO highlights “the imminent risk of a global water crisis.”

How many people will be affected by this global crisis depends on the “scenario,” Richard Connor, one of the main writers of the text, told AFP. “If nothing is done, 40 to 50% of the population will still not have access to sewerage and about 20-25% to drinking water,” he emphasizes. Even if these figures do not change, the world population is increasing, and with it the number of victims.

To try to reverse this trend, and also hope that by 2030 everyone will have drinking water and toilets, as was put in place in 2015, about 6,500 participants in the UN Water Conference, including about a hundred ministers and more than ten heads of state and government, will meet from today until the day after tomorrow Friday in New York, and they will be asked to make specific commitments.

But some observers are already voicing concern about the scale of those commitments and the availability of funding that would be required to meet them.

“Now or never”

“There is a lot to be done and time is not on our side,” commented Gilbert Ugbo, president of the UN platform coordinating the water project, since there is no dedicated agency.

The conference, which begins today, is the first international conference of its magnitude, which has been organized since 1977 on a vital issue, but which has been neglected for decades.

In a world where freshwater consumption has increased by nearly 1% per year over the past 40 years, the report highlights water scarcity that “tends to become universal” and will worsen with global warming, affecting even areas that were untouched until then. so far now, such as East Asia and South America.

About 10% of the world’s population lives in a country where pressure on water resources has reached a critical level. And, according to a UN climate report published last Monday, “nearly half of the world’s population” suffers from “severe” water shortages for at least part of the year.

A situation that also sheds a harsh light on inequality. “Wherever you are, if you are rich enough, you can have water,” notes Richard Connor. On the other hand, “the poorer you are, the more vulnerable you are to crises.”

The problem lies not only in the lack of water, but also in its pollution due to the absence or inadequacy of sewerage and water treatment systems.

Two billion people drink contaminated water

At least two billion people drink water contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, and polio. Apart from pollution from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, insecticides, microplastics, nanomaterials…

To ensure access to drinking water for all by 2030, the UN estimates that investments made today must be at least tripled.

Water pollution also threatens nature. Freshwater ecosystems, which provide invaluable assistance to humanity, in particular, by helping to combat global warming and its consequences, are among the “most vulnerable in the world,” the text of the report emphasizes.

“We have disrupted the water cycle,” sums up Henk Ovink, Commissioner for Water Resources of the Government of the Netherlands, co-organizer of this conference with Tajikistan.

“We need to act now because water-related insecurity undermines food security, health, energy security, urban development” and exacerbates “social problems,” he continues. “Now or never,” he adds, is “a generational opportunity.”

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}